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Blocking automatic activation in DAGs

After the post on Exchange 2010’s Active Manager I received a question on the possibilities to block automatic activation of database copies in a DAG. There could be legitimate reasons for wanting this, like when you want to prevent remote database copies in a secondary data center from being activated automatic.

The blockade can be created on two levels:

Server – this prevents automatic activation for any database copy hosted on that server;

To enable automatic activation again for this database copy on the specified server, use Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy, like:

Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy –identity <DatabaseID>\<ServerID>

Be advised that contrary to what the name of the cmdlet might suggest, using Suspend in conjunction with ActivationOnly and Resuming an activation blocked database copy does not affect the replication process for that database copy.

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About Michel de Rooij

Michel is a Microsoft MVP for Office Server and Services, specializing on Exchange Server, Office 365 and with a PowerShell affection. He is the publisher of EighTwOne, and works as a consultant. Find Michel on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+.

If I understand your question correctly, you want to activate a blocked database which isn’t possible. You can block it on the server and database level, and that’s also the level where you need to unblock it. If you block it on the server level and want to unblock on the database level, that’s not possible; you can unblock it on the server level and block per database.

Thank you for your reply.
We have Exchange 2010 DAG in two data-centers, we have setup all active DBs located in first data-center (Mailbox server + CAS array [witness]) and copy DBs in second data-center (mailbox server). Than we use following command to suspend database copy activation “Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy –identity \ –ActivationOnly”.
My question is, how we should activate DBs copy in second data-center if mailbox server in first data-center stop working and what happened if mailbox server will start-up later in first data-center.

1) When blocked, automatic activation is also blocked so you need to manually deblock and activate the 2nd copies. Blocking is mostly used to prevent lagged copies becoming active.
2) When the 2nd copies are active and you fire up the first DC, the databases in the first DC will be (re)synchronized. They won’t be activated automatically.

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About Michel de Rooij

Michel is an Office Servers and Services MVP with a PowerShell affection, and publisher of EighTwOne. You can find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google+. Use the Contact form for questions, consulting, support or other engagements.